


that shadow dances over lips and bedroom walls

by clytemnestras



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Clothing Kink, Conversational Troping, Crossdressing, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Feminization, Kink Negotiation, Oral Sex, Pop Culture, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, sexuality exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 00:53:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11886477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: It's important it's not always in the Dreamatorium which has internal logic, which is confined by laws of fictional universes, which works when she saysrender environment 1920sand they play Jay and Daisy for as long as she cares - or Selina and Bruce for as long as he does - and not when she turns to him in the middle of something, anything, and sayshey, can we not be us right now?





	that shadow dances over lips and bedroom walls

**Author's Note:**

> title from a poem I wrote as a baby teenager about Peter Pan. it felt appropriate. 
> 
> fun fact: this fic took me over a year to write and is much gentler than (but still as kinky as) the tags imply. yay for character study by way of kink negotiation!

The plushies are spread out with care, arced around Annie as a studio audience, watchful eyes making declarations seem bolder, daring, brave new girl. Truth time is special time is real time is butterflies biting at her duodenum time is Abed is not Abed time.

 

(They are both aware of the transience of this period. Post-Troy pre-Britta, straining for something that they can both feel, something missing or coming something like Axe deodorant or Teen Spirit, cheap and overpowering and home home home. They are blindsided for a moment there, twin souls without a triplet to stabilise. Dozens of confessions would not have happened without the open wound, ache, hunger, plot device,  _ whatever. _ )

 

They're spread out on the carpet of her room, fairylights filling the makeshift fort with a pale pink heat. Annie's skin feels touched by studio lights and Abed looks framed gold, quiet and statuesque. (She worries they might be his insides turned out because playtime in the fort throws logic into the proverbial misfiled administrativa shredder.) 

 

Annie takes three sips of peppermint tea and snaps her bra strap as it slips from her sleeve. She squeezes her eyes shut for one, two, three, and says, “I want to kiss a girl.”

 

She looks at Abed and Abed is Annie, is  a mirror, is her own slightly frowny face.  

 

She tilts her head and he blinks twice. “Can I break character?”

 

“I... guess.”

 

“Right," he nods. Taps at his thigh with one long finger. “See, I’m concerned about how that's gonna work. There's a logistics failure somewhere.”

 

She nods down at the floor, hand sweeping across the belly of one plushie. Abed stops her hand. Annie clears her throat. “I’m still working on that part.”

 

*

 

Annie is full up with these things, want and fantasy and play sewn deep into her sensible chest. 

 

She wants and she gets on with the reading for class. Wants and corrects Abed’s grammar when he speaks Blorgon in the study room, trading quiet notes back and forth. Wants and looks Jeff in the eye - looks Britta in the eye, looks  _ everyone _ bold faced and bravely - and smiles with occasional softness but goes about her serious, sensible day.

 

Day, though is different to night. Home is different to anywhere. Three breaths in the doorway and she's drifting into transience.

 

(It's important that home as a whole becomes a safe and ungoverned place. She can look at Abed and sink into character, can say  _ I am  _ not  _ a committee _ and watch Han swim to the surface whilst he makes buttered noodles and she pours out twin glasses of Special Drink, because that's fine every once in awhile.)

 

(It's important it's not always in the Dreamatorium which has internal logic, which is confined by laws of fictional universes, which works when she says  _ render environment 1920s  _ and they play Jay and Daisy for as long as she cares - or Selina and Bruce for as long as he does - and not when she turns to him in the middle of something, anything, and says  _ hey, can we not be us right now? _ )

 

She comes in and it's already there in the air, in the ajar door of her bedroom where Abed is stretched out on the carpet, enclosed in blankets and throw pillows. The stitches on her sensibleness pull pull pull and she shrugs off her coat, toes off her shoes and shakes off those vestiges of rational skin.

 

His eyes flick up to her and search. “I thought we should do this first. Miscommunication is a great plot device but it basically sucks if you're trying to not sabotage a friendship.” He pats the cushion beside him. “So talk me through this thing,” he says, as she slides up against him, warmth from beneath his v-neck transferring where they almost touch. “Tell me what you want.”

 

She curls her hand around his and lets it rest on his lap, solid and drifting. “It’s like. Haven't you ever wondered what it'd be like to run your hand up another guy’s arm and feel if it's as solid as you think? Or…” She pauses like her heart pauses, like her brain yells out in echoes  _ this is ridiculous, grow up.  _ She breathes in again, counts out an eternal  _ one two three  _ and looks up at him, trying to not worry about her voice and it's encroaching smallness. “Or what it might taste like if you leant all the way in and let that firm mouth fit against yours, stubble rubbing across your cheeks?”

 

He looks at her and tilts his head. “I’m not sure if you've noticed, but I’ve been in various stages of infatuation with Jeff since the first day we met.”

 

She studies him, half smiling, half wary, eyebrows sunk low like shadows across her eyes. “Abed?’

 

He shrugs and draws a finger down the back of her hand.

 

“ _ Anyway _ , for me it's just. I want to know what the difference in touch is like.  _ Really _ want.” It's not that she can't look at him, it's that she's dizzy on her own thoughts, held together only by the weight of his hand. “But I also want to feel safe. I'm not really sure how to reconcile that, so.”

 

“So.” He rests his head on her shoulder and looks up so their gazes align. His fingers keep tracing warm weird shivery paths along her hand and forearm, drawing along the knuckles, then veins, then the downy hair. “I’ll be honest, the voice of reason really doesn't gel with my role and it doesn’t do much for me but I'm gonna deviate here.”

 

He raises her hand and clasps it between his own, warm and too sweaty and, and, and.

 

“You need to do what makes you happy in a way that makes you comfortable,” he says. “You've held my hand through enough crazy shenanigans and screaming fits, I'm here for your hot sexuality questioning episode.”

 

(It's a blessing, sometimes, the habitual,  _ no, not here, Troy might see us, might think… _ Their bones so used to the head shaking and cold shock when the other moves and takes their leaching warmth with them. They can stop that way, not  _ not  _ wanting but unsure, moments fraught with weight and plot hinges.)

 

(Other times the hesitation has to die.)

 

Annie twists so they're eye-level and traces her free hand over the soft skin of his jaw, the dulled sharp way his cheekbones raise beneath her fingers like some undiscovered wonder.

 

“Annie, are we doing a -”

 

“Shut up,” she says, and kisses his pliant mouth.

 

When they pull back he is breathless and her hands are still cradling his face. “Come on," she whispers, breathing out this cascade of warmth over his face. “Mad Men is on in ten minutes.”

 

*

 

Saturday morning is a complete cliche and in her heart of hearts she likes to pretend she spends the time on the laptop hunting for short-term internships which align with her class schedule. As it stands, she's in footie pyjamas and eating lucky charms, arguing with Abed about whether the increasing existentialism and complex backstory are damaging the wacky originality of Adventure Time.

 

“I kinda liked it… better before. Plot is nice but the show being nonsensical and surrealist works.” She leans over and steals a marshmallow from Abed's bowl. It's easy to reach where she’s perched on the arm of his chair, too easy, really.

 

She's still chewing when she goes on. “Sometimes the sentimentality is like watching the powerpuff girls and finding out Buttercup has some horrible freudian nightmare backstory, but it's all cool because hey, it's still pretty colours and violent jokes.”

 

“That's probably a bad example.” He drains the milk from his bowl and leans over to pick at hers. “The whole creation of the girls is kind of a psychological mess and this  _ is _ a show where Satan is a drag queen obsessed with preschoolers. But I get your point.”

 

She flushes, just a touch.

 

“Hey,” he says, reaching out and grasping her arm, fingers tightening around her just a little too hard. “I just had an idea.”

 

Quick as that he's gone, rushing into his bedroom and leaving her with nothing but the phantom of his hand on her bicep.

 

“Abed, what the hell?”

 

“Just bear with me, okay?”

 

She can hear things in there, some small crashes and this tiny effeminate groan that makes her both smile and squirm and then there's a silence that stretches out for far too long for her to be at ease. 

 

“Abed?” It's a question, a timid thing that almost frightens her with its sincerity.

 

Her voice is in hiding when he re-enters, trapped somewhere in transit between lungs and mouth and -

 

“Annie?”

 

She lowers her cereal bowl to the ground and gets up, coming toward him with an outstretched hand almost possessed by how much she wants to touch. 

 

He doesn't say anything about her slightly open mouth or how lightly her fingers trace the thin straps of the bra, how they get bolder the further down they travel, taking in the feel of nude lace and satin against the soft skin of his chest.

 

She looks up at him with her left hand moulded over one cup, the right just glancing along the underwiring and the moment sits itself as inconceivable inside her chest. “Abed, you look…”

 

He nods and lets her explore him as if he might be something bronzed inside a dusty museum, being rediscovered for the first time. 

 

“Troy and I did this once.”

 

“You did?” Her hand pauses, her fingers tucked into the left strap, resting just above the cup. Her knuckles grace his skin whenever he inhales.

 

“Well, not this. I put this on, before - we were doing reshoots on our kick puncher pastiche and there was a love scene. It was my idea, I don't really have a problem with costumes. But he was looking at me kinda like you are now.”

 

_ Oh _ , she thinks, a hungry, jealous gasp that almost shivers through her. She can't read his face - but then it's hard to see it, to look up from where lace and satin intersect skin.

 

“Did you two…”

 

“Kissed, a few times. Usually with context, though it's possible that was a safety net.” He says it blankly, faraway in the way he always is but now somehow with purpose -  _ wistful _ slips into her head and fits perfectly into the collage of things Abed she collects in there.

 

“Did you want to, without the net?” Her fingers keep slipping against the fabric, teasing gently under the band and stroking the uncovered skin as if it's illicit, and not something she’s seen a hundred times when he walks from the shower to his room, towel loose on his waist.

 

He looks down for a moment and then his hand catches hers, holding her in the moment and keeping a wild point of contact. “I'm not sure that's relevant. A better question would be, do you want to try this?”

 

Her throat is twisted all the way up inside under his too-wide gaze but she nods, fingers rubbing thoughtlessly underneath the bra.

 

“Okay," he says, and eases her hand away. “But later. So we can do it right.” He slips an arm behind his back and unhooks the bra with far too little struggle, sliding the straps down and off, throwing the bra over the arm chair.

 

He frowns, then glances at the kitchen. “Do you want more cereal?”

 

*

 

She spends the next few days drifting back to the image of him that way, smooth skin and smoother satin. It's a distraction, which is good for getting her out of her head except that it's a  _ distraction  _ and she's spending more time inspecting the insides of her eyelids than ever before. 

 

Britta pulls her into a bathroom, fingers tight on her wrist after she walks dazedly into some lockers and slinks into a class she doesn’t take. They don’t touch much, just that point of contact, but Annie feels completely exposed. 

 

“Are you okay? Because you’re acting kinda… crazytown bananapants lately.”

 

Annie laughs, and it’s too conspicuous, and she feels slightly crazed but her smile is sharp as ever. “I’m fine! I’m totally fine, Britta.” She lets her left hand drift down and rub the back of Britta’s hand where it closes around her wrist. “I promise, if there’s anything up I’ll come to you first.”

 

“Yeah well, you better.” Britta leans forward, wraps her arms around Annie and rocks her quickly side to side, Annie holding her breath so the squeak compressed inside her ribcage can’t spill out. When she pulls back Britta is smiling, all exposed teeth and dollar-store lipgloss, and Annie can’t help but smile back. 

 

When Britta is gone she goes inside a cubicle and sits down on the toilet lid, wincing at the germ risk. She pulls out her phone and stares at it for longer than she probably should before giving in and texting Abed. 

 

_ Tonight.  _

 

*

 

They negotiate it quickly, like whispers passed between them so louder words cannot ruin the mystique. She says  _ you’ll still be you,  _ and he replies,  _ if that’s who you want me to be.  _

 

She steps outside to compose herself, and she he can compose their masterpiece, and she almost wants to cry about it, because there are a thousand things not happening in the space she calls a home like whispered conversations about a third table leg for their wobbly existence and grief that they refuse to spill out like word vomit on their ugly carpet.

 

When he yells  _ come in  _ she has to take a minute to pull her bones back into the shape he left them in, and leave her mind in the hallway. 

She steps inside with the best intentions, but they get more dishonest as her eyes scan across the room. 

 

It is nothing like seeing a girl. It is everything like seeing Abed; the smoothness, with the sharpest edge of masculinity is so irremovable from her lexicon that he would always be Abed and this would always be them, in the way it is always them, despite names and costumes to an illusionary contrary. 

 

And she still wants that feminine touch, that slight swell of flesh against her, that glossy, almost familiar mouth. But this. This.

 

She falls to her knees so they are eye level.

 

“Hi,” she whispers, leaning forward to cup her palm around his face. She touches the arch of his eyebrow with her fingertips, down the almost-swell of his narrow cheeks, then the smooth petal of his lower lip, a little chapped but so soft she wonders if her fingers might melt him all away.

 

“Hi,” he whispers back, his tongue brushing against her fingers and making her shiver all the way through. He’s wearing mascara and it makes his eyes unbearably big and bright when they look down at her. She's still smaller than him, even like this.

 

She lets her hand wander lower. It's not just the bra, this time, and she accidentally brushes the sleeve of the silk dressing gown off of his shoulder and she can't help but draw her fingers along the exposed strap, pale gold against the darker bronze of his skin which makes him shiver just slightly under her touch.

 

“I want,” she says, catching his eyes where they're watching her.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Undress me,” she says.  _ I want to watch you watch me make you.  _ She touches his hands, first the left, then the right, and brings them up to her shoulders. She kisses him then, just once, for the first time, the hint of cocoa lipbalm melting into what she knows as intrinsically  _ Abed  _ and tingling against her lips and her tongue. She feels very soft and small and gentle, but solid as diamond with him under her hands, her mouth, moving in a counterpoint only after she makes the first move. 

 

They part sweetly and she moves her arms back so he can unbutton her cardigan, only slipping on the fiddly buttons twice before easing it off her shoulders.

 

“More?” 

 

She nods. Raises her arms over her head. He’s quiet, methodical, undressing her like he's pulling a thread on a sweater. (And that's different, because until he showed her his palms she was sure needed to be opened like a gift, quick and ready to be coveted.)

 

She finds herself looking down at him, laying on his belly in her carpet and focused with a kind of scrutiny that makes her squirm. He wants so  _ see.  _

 

(She wants to see him, too, the way the lace underwear fits over his straight hips and the swell of his ass.)

 

(She wants to spread her legs open and let him see anything he wants.)

 

“Look at me,” she says, almost surprised by the tone of her voice. “Up here, at my face.” She runs her hand through his hair, the same as it always is, thick and soft between each finger. “Take off the kimono, I want to see your skin.” Her words come out in a deep, dark breath.

 

His eyes are shining, and she can see herself reflected in them from the warm glow of the room, herself mirrored in him, herself towering above where he's spread across the floor and she's starting to  _ like _ this. It's not the thing she was looking for, but there's something fantastically powerful about the feeling she's riding when he looks up and waits for her next instruction.

 

“Hi,” he says, his hands wrapping around her thighs. 

 

“Hi.” It's silly that only now do the anxious little butterflies bloom in her belly, that she wants to cover up and squirm, to feel three years younger and beg to switch the lights off and burrow into the comforting dark. 

 

Abed smiles and gives a friendly squeeze to her left thigh, “You ready?”

 

She nods, suddenly wordless.  _ Please,  _ she thinks,  _ I want,  _ she thinks. She thinks a thousand little feelings she doesn't have the language for, which makes her dually more desperate and ready to bolt and stay up all night learning the dictionary.

 

He makes her choice for her, spreading apart her thighs and trailing the knuckle of one finger down her core, parting her before the breath can jump from her body. She shivers, and he lets his hands explore, knowing all the parts that make her sweat and exploiting every one of them until she pulls on his hair sharply.  _ Oh,  _ she thinks, startled by the touch, by how slick she realises she is for him, ready and quivering for his touch.

 

Annie fights not to screw her eyes shut and hide away from the sweet feeling that hums through her when his hot, slick tongue passes over her clit. 

 

All these words tumble into her mouth,  _ “Oh my god,”  _ she manages, with  _ I love you  _ coming after.

 

(She wonders if she means that, if she loves him - which she does, she does love him, has for longer than she can pinpoint, but in a lot of ways she's sure aren't the right one. She wonders if there's a wrong way to love the person staring up at you from between your legs, leaning into the hand you have fisted in their hair and hissing at the pull.)

 

With his tongue on her she feels liquid inside, pulsing and almost sore with how much she needs this, needs something to clench down on whilst she writhes. There's an edge to it, the way his stubble scratches warmly against the inside of her thighs and that makes it better, makes her hiss against him even though she was stood beside him this morning when he shaved extra close for authenticity, both of them pressed together in the bathroom wearing footie pyjamas. She lets one hand slip down out of Abed’s hair to touch the strap of the bra again, the scratchiness of the lace contrasting the satin softness of his skin. It gives her something to focus on, loosening the tension in her body, and has her remembering why they're here on the floor, touching slickly, skin against skin.

 

It's completely confusingly weird how much she likes the way he feels in her hands. That she can direct him by the hair to where she needs his mouth most, that she can slide her fingers under the strap of the bra and ease it down his shoulder, feeling like she's uncovering some illict secret. More than that, though, she likes how warm his mouth is, how slick and soft and gorgeous she feels inside with his tongue lapping at the wetness she can't help spilling into his mouth. She feels soaked through. His mouth moves against her, warm and wet and determined, just like he's unravelling her again.

 

And this - it's different than the other times. Somehow more real, more exposed, even though he's covered up in their latest digression. He's eating her out with such gusto she almost wants to pat him dazedly on the head - instead she runs her nails along his scalp, pulling softly after each path - and must blink slowly to keep her bedroom in focus.

 

Annie gasps when he parts her, two fingers sliding smoothly inside, and that sharp, delightful push tips her over the edge. His tongue pulses against the bud of her clit as she tumbles, keeping her strung out on the bliss of orgasm for so long she has to push him away because it's too much for her to take.

 

It takes her a few moments to return to the room, and a couple more to open her eyes where she finds him sitting in his heels, eye-level again and watching her with a measured expression. (Perhaps he is always looking at her through the safety of a lens and she is always acting the part she thinks he should be watching.)

 

“Abed -” She cuts herself off when he smiles at her and wipes his face on the bottom of his kimono. She wrinkles up her nose (and she's learnt to do that on command now, for when her name is Samantha and mischief is abound.) “A girl wouldn't do that.”

 

Abed finds her eyes. “I thought I was just being Abed. In costume.”

 

“Oh - yes, yeah, you were. But still. Just so you know.” She smiles that him. “That was gross.” 

 

He smiles back, then runs a finger under the band of the bra, and that makes her brain stop for a moment. “Should I take these off now?”

 

“NO!” Her cheeks flush warmly. “I mean. What about you? Don't you want me to…”

 

Her hand finds itself on the edge of the panties he's in, still fascinated in the difference between fabric and skin.

 

His brow furrows. “But this is for you.”

 

Her fingers slide under the elastic for a second, then drag along the fabric, curling warmly around him where he's pressed against the lace and making him inhale a little quicker. “But I want to make you feel good too.”

 

She tightens her hand and slides it down, molding the fabric around him, feeling the warmth of him filtering through. There's something _ nice  _ about the weight of him, something satisfying about the way he sounds when she tightens her hand around him. 

 

“That's good,” she finds herself saying. “So good for me.” She speeds up her hand, the lace bunching up under her hands and stretching all around him. “You look so pretty for me, Abed.”

 

His breaths trail off into a drawn out sigh and she can feel him twitching in her hand and her heart speeds up at the power she has in the moment. Annie leans forward, close enough that she's almost in his lap, and kisses him hard, biting down on his lower lip and feels him come hot and wet in her hand. She strokes him through it, whispering against his mouth just how  _ good  _ he is for her, like this, how  _ pretty.  _

 

When they part, both of them are breathless. When she looks at him she almost wants to laugh, and can see he does too, the two of them falling out of their mindsets like blown dandelion seeds. 

They clean up quickly but thoroughly because she wants to recoil at the thought of sleeping still messy and no one wants to think about what would happen if they let the panties dry and cling to Abed's skin. All their things get dropped into the washbasket to be uncovered later when her cleaning gloves are firmly in place ready to tackle delicates, and the wet wipes are passed over skin and thrown quickly into the trash. She can still feel the moisture on her skin when she slides her silk pyjamas on.

 

Abed looks ready to wander, after, like usual,but she coaxes him into staying in her bed beside her because she wants to feel close. She likes the warmth and softness of him. 

 

He climbs in facing her, and she's not sure why it's not what she expected, but it's not. Her hand reached out of its own volition, cupping his cheek and letting her fingers wander the hill of his cheekbone. “This was… Amazing. Thank you, Abed.”

 

He smiles at her, and her borrowed telepathy tells her it means  _ you're welcome.  _

“So what about you?” Her fingers wander up to his temple. “What do you want?”

 

“Right now I'm kinda partial to sleep, actually.”

 

“Abed -”

 

He laughs. “I have some things I can tell you tomorrow. Let's just live in this for the night.”

 

“Okay,” she whispers, feeling young and silly and  _ warm.  _ “Can you… will you tell me a story to help me sleep?”

 

He touches one foot against hers under the fleur-de-lis print bedspread. “As you wish.”

 

*

 

When Annie wakes up the world is the world and  _ their world  _ is  _ their world  _ and over breakfast he says, “ _ I am the night _ ,” and Selina Kyle does not seem like a bad person to spend an hour as whilst she gathers up dishes and fishes floating chunks of cereal out of the drain.

 

She says, “ _ Miaow _ ,” in a perfect Pfeiffer imitation and the smile he throws her vanishes as quickly as it appears. Cowl on, scowl on, hero cape at the ready.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> come chat with me on tumblr [@bohemicns](https://) if you feel so inclined


End file.
